


If not by faith

by ohmyfae



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, M/M, More characters as they appear, Prince Gladio AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-02-14 02:01:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12997398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyfae/pseuds/ohmyfae
Summary: Prince Gladiolus Amicitia has returned home from war, only to find that the safe haven of Insomnia has been compromised. Daemons are appearing in the street, daemons who bear a message for the prince of Lucis, and the only man who can protect Gladio from this new threat is Noctis Caelum, one of the most powerful--and dangerous--users of illegal magic in the city.





	1. Chapter 1

The night the war ended, the lights in Insomnia went out.

Corner cafes fell silent as coffee machines, ovens, and air conditioners sputtered and died. The 5th Street Arena erupted into chaos as two teams stared at each other across a darkened field. A group of actors disappeared in the middle of their second act, televisions winked out in homes all over the city, and pedestrians flipped on their phone flashlights, turning subway stations and bus stops into fields of scattered stars. 

In the heart of the Citadel, King Clarus Amicitia marched down the halls, the bright circle of his flashlight bobbing on the floor.

“It can’t be the Crystal.” Monica, one of Clarus’ top members of the Crownsguard and a tempering voice on his council, walked smoothly at his side. What he could see of her face was level and expressionless--a welcome change after the well-bred panic of the council room. She held her phone out as a light, and her hair swung in her eyes as she walked, casting them in shadow.

“As though it could be anything else,” Clarus said. “Damn. Regis warned me that the strain of powering the city might be too much…”

“Regis?” Monica sounded amused. “Not your pet mage?”

Clarus didn't answer. The room that held the Crystal was electronically locked, but the manual override was easy enough to operate. Monica discreetly turned her back while he activated it, but spun on her heel when she heard his strangled curse.

Clarus stood before the open door, staring up at the Lucian Crystal.

The magic that flowed within the heart of the stone had always shone with a pale blue light, as it had since the founding of Lucis. Yet the Crystal that hovered over Clarus was dark as pitch, with sparks of red that shot through it like the light of a dying fire.

“Gods,” Monica whispered.

“If they’re listening, I doubt they’d intervene,” said Clarus. He stepped forward, ignoring Monica’s protests, and squinted into the dark of the Crystal.

Deep within, in the center of the stones jagged maw, something shifted.

Blue light blazed outward in a bright, overpowering pulse, sending both Clarus and Monica to their knees. The Citadel walls trembled as generators roared to life, alarms beeping and vents hissing out cold air. Power returned to the city in a wave, short-circuiting old fuses and frying weak plugs with the force of a lightning strike. 

When the spots cleared from Clarus’ vision, the Crystal was still before him, shrouded in magic, faint blue light emanating from its core.

Two hours later, an envoy from Niflheim arrived with the terms of their surrender. When Clarus nodded, the lamps at his back shorted out, and he remembered, perhaps too late, the cold eyes of the man whose traitor’s heart would always be Clarus’ undoing.

“Monica,” he said, when the envoy from Niflheim had gone, leaving them alone in the empty throne room. “I need you to bring me Regis Caelum.”

 

\---

 

“We don't use those anymore.”

Gladiolus Amicitia, crown prince of Lucis and a captain of his majesty’s armed forces, looked away from the monitors of Insomnia’s 32nd street subway station. It was a warm day for early spring, too hot to wear a full uniform, and Gladio’s jacket was stuffed unceremoniously in his bag. He knew he’d be in for it if anyone saw him, but Cor and the rest of his squad were stuck at the gate, waiting for traffic to clear. 

“Sorry,” he said. “I must have missed that.”

The young man standing next to him grinned. He was at least a head shorter than Gladio, with dark hair and a black shirt patterned with skulls, and cargo pants that were out of style even in Cleigne. A ring glinted on a fine chain around his neck, and his boots seemed a little too big for him. 

“Your metro card,” he said. “We don't use those anymore. How long were you out? You're military, right?”

“I was deployed for three years,” Gladio said. “Since when does the subway change _anything?”_

“I know, right?” The guy shoved his hands in his pockets. “Where are you headed?”

“Citadel,” Gladio said. “So that means, uh…”

“You want the B train. Come on, I can get you through for free.”

Gladio shrugged and followed the guy through a turnstile, which had a delay that gave him just enough time to slip past. 

“Where _is_ everyone?” Gladio asked. The station was almost deserted. There were a few schoolkids huddled in the corner, an elderly woman coughing into a handkerchief, and a fat station cat sitting on a plinth by the station master’s office. His new partner in petty crime shrugged.

“Probably already at the Citadel,” he said. His grin faded. “You know. The _prince_ is coming home today.”

Gladio wondered just how much he’d let his beard and hair go in the past three years. “Yeah?”

Whatever the guy wanted to say next was drowned out in a roar of engines and shrieking metal. A train rumbled into the station, and spat out a handful of exhausted people. Gladio, the old woman, and the young man all piled into an empty car. Gladio took a seat, and his companion leaned down as he passed.

“I’m Noct, by the way,” he said. He slumped down on a row of empty seats, and tapped his foot on the arm rest. The ring around his neck thumped against his chest as the train rattled its way along the tunnel. On the other side of the aisle, the old woman coughed wetly into her hands.

“I’m Talcott,” Gladio said. The last thing he wanted was to be spotted before he had to get ready for his appearance at the Citadel. “So, what, you ain't goin’ to the big announcement tonight?”

Noct scoffed. “If I want to listen to some asshole talk about all the people he killed for the glory of Lucis, I’ll go to a bar.” 

Gladio couldn't help bristling a little. Noct glanced his way. “Wait. You don't know the prince or anything, do you?”

“Sort of,” Gladio said. “He did his part.”

“Sure he did.” Noct picked up his ring, twisting it in his fingers. “And now he’s back, he gets to order the execution of anyone who uses a little magic to heat their coffee or charge their phones.”

Ah. That explained it. Gladio glanced up at the monitor announcing upcoming stations and tried to will the train to move faster. Despite the fact that the Crystal’s magic powered most of the city, individual people using that magic for their own purposes was illegal. It all had to do with the Crystal itself--When it was given to the first king of Lucis, he was given a warning that the magic of the Crystal, if used by human hands, could tear the country to pieces. They would be a second Solheim, nothing but ash and ruin. So the rulers of Lucis had become guardians to the stone, and magic was outlawed. Simple as that.

It didn't stop people from trying, though. There were always incidents of people hacking into power lines and accidentally setting themselves on fire or freezing entire city blocks. Most of the time, apprehending them was just a way to keep them alive.

“We don't kill people,” Gladio said.

“We?” asked Noct. “What’d you do in the war, ask the Nifs to back off?”

“Not like that,” Gladio said. “I mean the king. He doesn't kill mages. There are even some registered spell-makers in the army. They seemed pretty alive to me.”

“You keep telling yourself that,” Noct said, pinching the ring between his forefinger and thumb.

The old woman across the aisle burst into a fresh fit of coughing, doubling over her fists. Her shoulders shook, her arms were trembling, and when she wheezed into her fingers, the lights of the train flickered. 

“Hey,” Noct said. His voice sounded tight, the way Gladio’s soldiers did before a skirmish. “Hold on.”

The lights went out again. The old woman sank forward in jerks as the lights flashed, on and off, like a puppet in an old motion-capture film. Gladio stood, and Noct sat up straight. 

“Don’t,” he said. “Something’s wrong.” 

Gladio ignored him and crouched down in front of the woman.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said. “You doin’ okay?” The words died in his throat as the woman spat black phlegm into her hands. She looked up at him, and her eyes were _burning,_ the flesh of her face dripping like wax onto her dress. Gladio recoiled, and the woman pushed herself off her seat. 

The car went dark, and the train shuddered. Gladio heard a thick, organic sound, like wet clothes dropping to the floor, and when the lights flashed again, he could see the woman stepping out of her skin, uncurling into a large, thick-skinned creature with eyes like fire and a mouth that opened into blackness.

A daemon. A daemon, within the protective wall of Insomnia, where no daemon had set foot in over five hundred years. Gladio’s mouth felt painfully dry. 

He pulled out the paper spell he kept in his pocket and crushed it in his fist. His sword bloomed out from the paper, the hilt pushing Gladio’s fingers open. He’d never encountered this type of daemon before, even the ones the Nifs had sent their way. Without knowledge of its weaknesses, he didn’t know how long he could hold out before it turned from him to Noct. Gladio grabbed his phone and swiped to his emergency app, holding his thumb down hard. 

“Drop your sword!” 

Gladio looked up. Noct was standing at the daemon’s back, hand upraised. The daemon swung its head towards him, and Gladio took a step forward. 

“I said drop it.” Noct’s voice was sharp, with an edge of command that Gladio instinctively responded to. His sword fell from his fingers. “Don’t touch anything made of metal.”

Everything’s metal, Gladio wanted to say, as he bent down to pick up his sword again. He didn’t get far. Noct scowled and flexed his fingers. Lightning sprung from his palm, wrapping around his wrist like a band on a leash before lashing out at the daemon. The creature howled, and Noct took a deliberate step: The magic thickened, and the daemon sank to its knees. As soon as the lightning hit the floor of the train, every metallic surface crawled with sparks. Gladio hissed and fell back as thin strands of it raced up his arms, and looked up past the daemon into eyes that glowed violet with the unmistakable light of raw magic.

“Get down,” Noct whispered, and the daemon lunged for him, claws outstretched. He clapped his hands together and pushed them out, and a web of lightning spread over the daemon, sinking into its skin. It collapsed on the ground between them, twitching and yowling, sinking into formless ooze. 

Gladio and Noct stared at each other over the remains of the daemon. 

“You’re a mage,” Gladio said. A real mage, not someone who stole enough for a spell here and there. The kind of mage who could light up a train car. Set fire to a city. Bring a kingdom to its knees.

“And your name isn’t Talcott,” Noct said. 

They both startled as the train doors opened. Gladio tried to sit up at the sight of men and women in Crownsguard black, but the lightning that had run through the train felt like it was rooted in his bones, and none of his limbs worked the way they were supposed to. And Noct, standing wreathed in magic like a mage out of the kingdom’s collective nightmares, was thrown down in the middle of the mess on the floor, face pressed to the cold steel with a knee on his back. 

“You are under arrest,” said the Crownsguard soldier leaning over Noct, “for the use of unlicensed magic and assault on a member of the royal family. Anything you say or do can be used against you in a court of law...”

“Hey,” Noct said to Gladio, as a pair of cuffs were latched onto his wrists. “Do me a favor. Remind me never to save your life again.”


	2. Chapter 2

Gladio stood on a raised platform at the base of the Citadel, the silver circlet of a crown prince hastily pinned in his hair, a cloak draped over his captain's uniform. At his right, his little sister Iris was speaking into the microphone, twisting her hands behind her back where no one but Gladio could see.

"With the surrender of Niflheim," she said, her voice cracking through speakers in the wings of the crowd, "we welcome home our troops from the front lines..."

_Gladio had never seen a mage go under stasis before. He'd heard of it, seen the thick, padded shackles that nullified all magic in a six foot radius, but the look on Noct's face when they were activated was one of near agony. His back arched, fingers twisting into claws, and when he had his breathing under control enough to lift his head, he'd looked at Gladio through dark lashes made heavy with furious tears._

_"Tell me again," he said, "what you do with mages."_

Gladio stepped forward, giving Iris a one-armed hug as she backed off the podium. She rolled her eyes and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing his cheek. The crowd applauded, a rustling that reminded Gladio of rain beating down on the roof of the barracks.

"Good to have you home, Gladdy," Iris whispered. She'd grown nearly a foot since Gladio had seen her last, but the smile she gave him was so familiar that Gladio felt a hot weight in his throat, blocking his air. He swallowed around it.

"Missed you too, brat," he said, and Iris' grin widened.

_"It'll be easier if we have a name," the soldier holding Noct said, as Gladio tried to explain to another exactly what had gone down on the train._

_"Noct Gar," Noct said, and grunted as he was shoved in the back of the Crownsguard vehicle._

_"Gar, huh?" The soldier sounded bored, dragging their pen down a notepad. "That a family name?"_

_"Don't have one," Noct said, and the ring on his chest glinted in the strobing light of the car siren, blue and white, blue and white. Gladio thought of the woman stepping out of her skin in the flashing darkness of the subway, and when he looked into Noct's eyes, the dull, haunted look the man gave him was the same as his own after a battle, dark and flat and too swamped with emotion to feel anything at all._

"It is by your contributions at home that our troops were kept safe," Gladio said, running through his speech without really hearing it. He was too busy watching the sky: Dark clouds had scuttled over it since Gladio arrived, heavy with the promise of rain, and what little remained of the sun was replaced with the warm glow of iron lampposts. He shivered in a chill wind that made the banners on the podium crack and flap, and his thoughts ran back to the man on the subway, the hard glint in his eyes, the lightning that sprang from his hands. The woman, her face dripping onto her dress.

The skirmish three weeks ago, before he'd even heard of the ceasefire, when Cor Leonis dragged their best gunner over two sets of trenches and Gladio had held his shoulders down while Cor picked metal from his chest.

The sea of faces before him swam and blurred, becoming a muddy field against a dark sky. Gladio's breath came short, heart beating a staccato in his chest, neck prickling with sweat.

Then Iris touched his arm, and Gladio clenched his hands on the podium, jerking it an inch across the platform with a squeal of wood and metal. It was only then, with Iris at his side and the microphone trailing wires, that Gladio realized he was standing in silence before a crowd of thousands, gazing off into the horizon.

He leaned down. "Sorry about that," he said, and flashed a smile. "This is what happens when you ask a man used to eating instant noodles in a tent for three years to speak without a teleprompter. Where was I?"

"Something about Lucis," Iris said, and a ripple of laughter ran through the crowd.

For a moment, all Gladio could see was Noct's face as he examined his ring on the train, spitting out the word prince like a curse. "Well," Gladio said. "You don't need someone like me to tell you all about the glory of Lucis. I'm not..."

Behind him, someone started to cough.

Gladio turned slowly, reaching for Iris, and laid a hand on her shoulder. The man coughing was a member of his father's Council, who hadn't set foot on a battlefield in his life but nevertheless directed most of the army from his office in the Citadel. He coughed into his elbow, great racking coughs that shook his frame, and when he straightened, Gladio saw spots of black on his sleeve.

"Iris," Gladio said, in a tight voice. "I want you to run for the Citadel. Find Dad."

"What?" Iris grabbed Gladio's arm with both hands. "Gladdy, is this because of that thing at the station? Are you..."

But the Council member chose that moment to fall on his hands and knees, back hunched like a creature from the wilds of Duscae bending over a kill. Black spittle hit the boards of the platform, and when he looked up, his eyes were a ruin of fire. 

"Prince of Lucis," he said, and the skin of his face flapped and shifted as teeth too thick and long to be human formed the words. "He who guards the stone."

"Mr. Reus?" Iris whispered. She yelped as Gladio pushed her towards the edge of the platform, and stumbled into the arms of Cor, who picked her off her feet and ushered her out of the way. Gladio reached for his sword spell-paper and realized he'd left it in the changing rooms of the Citadel.

The crowd behind him broke into a chorus of screams as the man Iris knew as Reus shed his skin, unfolding up and out with a series of cracks and hisses, until Gladio stood alone on the podium, staring into the glowing eyes of an Iron Giant. 

\---

They had no chance. The men and women on the podium were all long-retired veterans or wounded war heroes, their weapons left behind or forgotten. They were unused to fighting daemons, and the giant that crushed the planks of the platform under one heavy foot was like no daemon Gladio had seen before. Bright lines of purple and red raced along its skin, a fire burned in its eyes and mouth, and no matter how the Crownsguard tried to draw its attention, it continued to stalk towards Gladio, slow and inexorable, hissing in a guttering voice words that could no longer mimic human speech. But Gladio could guess.

_Prince of Lucis._

Gladio fell back, fumbled for a sword he didn't have, and braced himself for the blow.

\---

In the holding cells reserved for magic users in the Citadel, the man who claimed to be Noct Gar sat with his knees drawn to his chest, listening to the clank of footsteps down the hall. In the fluorescent light of the cell, his hair looked almost blue, and his skin was covered with a sheen of sweat, his fingers slippery as they rubbed at the ring on its chain. Above him, the machine that kept his magic in stasis shone a faint gold.

The door clicked open, and he glanced up.

"Took you long enough," he said. Then he saw the face of the man standing at the cell door, and his hands slipped from the ring.

Clarus Amicitia tied up one of his ceremonial sleeves to the elbow. "Gar is the same alias your father used," he said, and smiled. "The Caelums never were very creative."

For a moment, Clarus watched the young man on the cot glower in silence, jaw clenched tight.

"Don't talk about my dad like you knew him," he said at last, and Clarus spotted the ring hanging on his chest, black and twisting and far too familiar. 

"Son," Clarus said.

"Don't call me son."

"Young man." Clarus examined Noct's face. Noctis Lucis Caelum, his records had stated. Son of Regis and Aulea Caelum. A model student at Insomnia's Star Heights elementary until he'd suddenly dropped out of school at the age of nine, at which point his father fell off the grid entirely, and his mother...

"A daemon appeared during my son's welcoming ceremony this afternoon," Clarus said, and Noct's scowl collapsed. "Thirty-seven people were killed."

Noctis' hand went to the ring. Clarus tried to banish the memory of that ring on another man's finger, long ago, when Clarus was young and foolish and easily led. It helped, in a sense, that the eyes that glared holes into Clarus' shoulder did not belong to Regis. Only the hair was familiar, a suggestion in his jawline, a certain irreverence that could only have been passed from father to son.

"Daemons shouldn't exist in Insomnia," Clarus said. "Your father said so himself, when he reinforced the protections on the wall--"

"When you used him," Noct said. "And now you're in trouble again, you what? Want to use his son?"

"I thought," Clarus said, in a careful, level tone, "that you might bring your father to the Citadel. This crisis goes beyond us both.”

Noct's knuckles went white. "Might be kind of difficult, your majesty," he said. "He's been dead for ten years."

After decades of war with the Empire, Clarus had thought himself hardened to grief. He’d held too many widows and widowers, watched too many children stand in silence as they received their parents’ medals of honor, heard too many names read off in morning reports. But this young man, swaying under the effects of the stasis and clutching his father’s ring like a lifeline, dragged Clarus out of his iron-willed control and into the body of the man who had just seen his son smile up at him through a mess of bandages, to the man who took Regis’ hand in the sunlit desert of Leide, who had spat the word _traitor_ from lips that had only minutes before teased the skin of a stubbled jaw. To the man who burned Regis’ letters, unopened, until they stopped coming.

If he were a better man, Clarus would have comforted the boy. He would have given Noctis what reparations he could offer, what closure he could find, and turn him back to what remained of his family with a promise never to trouble him again. But Clarus was a king, and kings could not afford to be better men.

“Then I fear your father’s burden falls to you,” Clarus said, and Noct’s lips twisted in a hard line.

“Of course,” he said. “It always does.”


	3. Chapter 3

Gladio opened his eyes to a sky made red with dust, crossed by greying streaks of rocket fire. The gunner Prompto Argentum, Cor Leonis' protege and the only one who didn't call Gladio _highness,_ was bleeding out at his feet, sweating ponds of mud in the shallow ditch. Cor crouched over him, one hand on his shoulder to keep him from thrashing, the other holding a bandage over his bare chest. 

"Keep breathing, kid," Cor said. "You can't miss the main event."

The main event? Gladio glanced up at the sky, which was already growing dark. Were they setting off another volley of rockets? Should he have been briefed? He knelt at Prompto's side and placed a hand on his forehead.

His fingers came away sticky with purplish liquid, dark as the ichor of the Iron Giant. Prompto turned to him, then kept turning, his head jerking unnaturally fast, joints creaking and snapping as they twisted out of true. When he stilled, his eyes burned like a fire, and his mouth was filled with rows and rows of rotating teeth, gnashing and snarling over the crack of gunshots.

"Prince of Lucis," he said, in a stuttering hiss. "Guardian of the Stone."

Gladio rolled out of his hospital bed, crashing to the tile floor with a bang that sent a bedside table full of flowers toppling with him. Bright blossoms cascaded over his back, and a plastic moogle with a heart for a nose went bouncing off under the bed. A shadow passed before him, and Gladio scrambled to regain his footing.

"Easy, Captain." Cor's gruff, no-nonsense voice did what no amount of wheedling and tiptoeing could do, and Gladio drew his shattered nerves to attention, sitting up on his knees. Cor gave him enough time to prepare for the hand at his elbow, and helped haul him to his feet. Gladio looked down at the mess on the floor and sighed. 

"Bad dreams, huh?"

That wasn't Cor. Gladio looked up, and narrowed his eyes at the dark figure lounging on the floor, flipping through his phone as though the puddle slowly creeping towards him was the sort of problem that happened to _other_ people. A shiny black ankle cuff dangled at the top of his right boot, but otherwise, he looked utterly unchanged from the moment Gladio met him at the station.

"Noct Gar?" he asked. The mage looked up from his phone and flashed him a mirthless smile. 

"Caelum, actually," Cor said. There was an odd, strained note in Cor's voice. "Son of Regis Caelum."

Gladio stared. He'd heard of Regis. Everyone had. Regis Caelum, the mage who'd been caught with his hands on the Crystal, whose betrayal of Clarus' trust had led to restrictions on even the smallest spells. The man Clarus rarely called by name, the one whose presence had loomed in the Amicitia household like a persistent ghost. Regis, the traitor mage who would have seen Insomnia fall to the dark.

Noctis Caelum tapped his phone, then stuck his finger in his mouth. It popped out cherry-red with heat, and he pressed it in the puddle at his side. Steam rose in curling wisps from the floor, the puddle evaporating in the span of a breath, and Noct went back to his phone. 

"The threat to the city," Cor said, pulling Gladio away from the dry tile, "and to you, is too dangerous for a member of the Crownsguard alone. It has been decided that you'll need... advanced protection."

"I can protect myself," Gladio said. Cor looked to the bandage at Gladio's left cheek and frowned. "I never needed this before."

"Little old ladies didn't turn into daemons before," Noct said, and shrugged at Gladio's scowl. "It's true."

"You don't think..." Gladio grabbed Cor by the arm and towed him a few feet back. "Something like this could have been--"

"I didn't do it," Noct drawled. His phone beeped cheerfully. "Just in case you were wondering."

Cor glanced back at Noct, and again, Gladio caught a tightness in his expression, a pinching at his mouth and eyes. "Clarus trusts him," he said, in a low voice. "I trust him. The Caelums--"

"Tried to destroy the city," Gladio said. Cor fell silent, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

"We don't know what Regis tried to do, Gladio. The kid's innocent, anyways. But I guess His Majesty doesn't trust him completely." He handed Gladio a small plastic switch on a keyring, not unlike the panic button for his car. "Press that, and the stasis cuff on his ankle will activate. It'll cut off his magic, make him harmless."

"I'm already harmless," Noct said, and tapped his ear at Cor's disgruntled look. "You guys are too used to barking orders. Whispers aren't supposed to carry, you know."

Gladio ran his thumb over the surface of the stasis button, remembering the way Noct had writhed when placed under stasis for the first time. Noct watched him, gaze fixed on his hand, and Gladio closed his fist over the button.

"Alright," he said. "If I have to."

Noct snorted and turned back to his phone.

It was another four hours before Gladio could leave the hospital. There were paparazzi to avoid, press to wrangle, an almighty mountain of paperwork, and no less than four doctors dithering over the fresh scar on his cheek. Noctis hung out in the background through all of it, sleeping in plastic chairs, texting on his phone, and casting Gladio searching looks every five minutes. By the time they made it out, huddled in the backseat of a nondescript car, Noctis was asleep on his feet. He propped his heels up on the headrest of the chauffeur's seat and shoved his phone in the pocket of his pants.

"So," he said.

"So, what?" Gladio asked. The car rumbled its way into Insomnian traffic, and Noct rolled his shoulders.

"So this is it, huh? You're gonna go back to the Citadel, hunch over the Crystal like a chocobo with a hoard--or whatever it is the royal family does with it, _I don't know_ \--and let daddy's Crownsguard solve your problem for you?"

"It ain't _my_ problem," Gladio said.

"The daemons spoke to you," Noct said, and jiggled his foot on the headrest. "They only started popping up when you came home. Whose problem is it if it isn't yours?"

Gladio touched the bandage over his left cheek. 

"Dad always said that a king's duty is to his people," Noct said. "The king told me over thirty people were killed in that daemon attack. Were they your people, too, do you think?"

Gladio rolled his good eye. "Tough talk from the son of a traitor."

The air between them went dry and cold, and the hairs on Gladio's neck stood up, one by one. Noctis had the ring in his hand again, rolling it in his palm, and there was a hint of violet in his bright blue eyes that crackled along the irises like a flame. Gladio moved for the button, and the air went still again. Noctis settled down like a cat who'd decided that the mouse it was hunting wasn't worth the effort.

"Whatever," he said, and huddled down again, reaching for his phone.

Gladio watched him for a moment. The city passed by behind the tinted window, casting Noct's face in shadow, but Gladio recognized the tight-faced melancholy from his time at the front. Cor got that look, sometimes, when he was busy stitching up his uniform or waiting for tea to brew. It was an old look, one that didn't belong on someone as young as Gladio or Noct, but Gladio had seen it in himself all the same, on the rare occasion when he dared to check a mirror.

He leaned forward and tapped on the partition.

"Your highness?" The chauffeur had an accent from the desert, warm and lilting with the suggestion of a twang. It was oddly comforting to hear.

"Stop at the thirty-second street subway station," Gladio said.

"Sure thing, highness, but I'll have to alert the Crownsguard."

Gladio shrugged and sat back. Noct turned to him, eyes narrowed, and tilted his head in a wordless question. 

"Thought maybe we'd check out the place where my problem started," Gladio said. "You got any magic that can help with this?"

"Not really," Noct said, and his lips twitched in a sideways smile. "But I might know someone who does."


	4. Chapter 4

When Gladio was first deployed to the desert, he and his squad were given a tour of the surrounding area by a young woman who ran the only gas station in a twenty mile radius. She'd hopped over thistle, sidestepped dangerous stones where snakes liked to cool off from the sun, and climbed rock faces that had Gladio and his fellow soldiers stumbling and shaking. She walked like she had a map of the desert in her bones, and even after three years of pacing the same godsforsaken ground, Gladio could never hope to understand it half so well.

He could see that same ease in Noctis as the mage skulked down the narrow streets of Insomnia in his large boots and wrinkled clothes. He ducked around pedestrians, jaywalked with the confidence of a man with nothing to lose, slipped between food trucks and dropped coins in street musicians' instrument cases without so much as looking at them. Behind him, Gladio floundered, tripping over people who passed Noctis like water around a stone, getting street names confused and almost losing Noct twice. 

They ended up in the lower city, where the slums gave way to a series of interconnected metal ladders under the street. It looked like the place where fire escapes went to die, and as Gladio climbed down the first ladder after Noct, he noticed the glow of lamps and televisions through narrow slits in the walls around them.

"Insomnia's mostly built on pieces of the old city," Noct said, when he caught Gladio staring. "The houses from back then still work, even if you do have to rig the electricity for it. One of my friends says you can even see signs of a road in the sewers, but I'm not about to go check."

Gladio dropped to a grilled walkway with a thump, and Noct scowled.

"Quiet," he said. "People don't like it when you stomp on the road."

Gladio stopped himself from pointing out that the rusted metal creaking under his feet was hardly a road. "Alright," he said. "What's this friend of yours doing in a place like this, anyways?"

Noct tumbled down another ladder, landing soundless as a cat on the platform below. "We live here," he said.

Gladio risked a glance to the street above. Dirt fell from the sidewalk like puffs of ash, and the sun was so far from what little sky remained that it might as well have been dusk. It reminded him of nights in the desert, digging himself in while smoke from Niflheim's military shrouded the moon.

"Come on," Noct said. "We're almost there."

They passed lines of washing left out to get dirtied by the smog, half-naked neighbors leaning out of their windows to chat with each other, and a few stray people who hunkered down in corners, heads lolling listless on their shoulders. They called out to Noctis as he passed, some muttering, some perking up to crack a joke or a smile, but Noct seemed to remember all of them.

"Hey," one called, stirring from under a pile of patchwork blankets. "How's my sweetheart?"

"Still too young for you, old man," Noct said, and pulled out his phone. "Give this a charge? I'll pay."

"I live in hope," the man said, and two large hands emerged from the blankets to take Noct's phone. A spark of magic bounced over the man's knuckles and disappeared with a faint crack. He handed the phone to Noct, who slipped him a few coins.

"Thanks," Noct said. "I'll put in a good word for you."

He got a chuckle for that, and glanced back at Gladio. Gladio picked up the pace, crowding up against Noct's shoulder as they headed down a lopsided ramp.

"You do that on purpose?" he asked. "Making that guy use magic in front of me?"

"Wow." Noct pushed ahead. "You really _are_ used to the world revolving around you, huh? Maybe I always let him charge my phone." He scuffed his feet on the grill. "And maybe your _dad_ said that while I'm here? Any magic used in your presence won't be illegal, so long as it doesn't hurt you."

"Pretty sure he meant magic done by _you._ "

"Really?" The grin Noctis gave him was more of a tight, cheerful grimace. "Were you there? Anyways, the guy we need works below. Watch your step."

They pattered down a set of actual stairs to a broad platform reinforced by panels of plywood and steel. A squat building sat there, protruding from the walls of the old city with warped boards and banners that flapped in the steam from the windows. Noct tapped his knuckles on a small door in the back, and rocked idly on his heels when the door swung open, releasing the scent of spirits and frying steak.

The man standing there was stocky, arms solid with muscle, with his hair braided in loops in the style of Galahd. He gave Noctis one look and sighed, rolling his eyes so hard Gladio could see the whites. "Fuck, Noct," he said. "Ignis is workin."

"It'll just be a second," Noct said. The man sighed again and turned into the cloud of light and steam. He came back with a tall, gangly man about Noct's age, sandy hair drooping over fogged glasses. He barely even looked at Gladio, placing both hands on Noct's shoulders and twisting him about.

"Gods above, Noctis," he said. "Where were you? You missed your appointment--I had to go for you, and I couldn't exactly make any excuses--"

"I'll go tomorrow," Noct said. He squirmed in Ignis' grip. "Let go, Iggy, I'm fine. I need one of your tracking spells."

Ignis raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. "You mean the ones you said you could break in half a minute? Those spells?"

"I don't need em for me," Noct said. Ignis looked to Gladio. "He's, uh. A friend. Someone went after him on the subway."

"So you're chasing a subway mugger. Quaint." The disapproving look Ignis was giving Gladio was scathing. 

"Come on, Specs. We all know you make the best." Noct reached for his ring, and Ignis' eyes narrowed.

"Very well."

Ignis dug through his pockets and pulled out a half-credit coin. He kissed it on the side showing the face of one of Gladio's long-ago ancestors, and flipped it to Noct. Noct caught it one-handed and beamed.

"It wears off in four hours," Ignis said. "Be careful." He looked at Gladio, mouth set in a hard line, and Gladio had to force himself to remain quiet and still.

"Thanks, Iggy," Noct said. "I might be out for the next few days, but I won't miss tomorrow, promise."

"Don't get yourself arrested, and I'll be satisfied," Ignis said. Noct and Gladio exchanged a brief look, and he frowned. "Noct? You aren't--"

"Gotta go, Specs," Noct said, grabbing Gladio's sleeve and towing him off. "Thanks for the spell!"

Gladio shook Noct off halfway up the ramp. "What's tomorrow?" he asked. 

"Nothing," Noct said. He flipped the coin in his hand, rubbing his thumb over the face side. 

"If you're my bodyguard now, you can't just go running off," Gladio said. Noct shot him a dirty look. 

"Then come with," Noct said. His ears went pink, a blush spreading up his neck. "Just don't get in the way, and for the love of the gods, don't say anything."

Gladio raised his own eyebrows at that, but Noct chose that moment to run ahead, darting up the pathways like a fish slipping through the current. Gladio stomped after him, never minding how the rails rattled and ramps creaked.

When they emerged in the street, Gladio had to shade his eyes from the glare of the sun. His phone buzzed with a mountain's worth of notifications, but Gladio ignored them to focus on being able to see more than he pink of his palm.

"Oh, yeah," Noct said. "It can get like that." He waved Gladio on, and they set off for the subway again, the magicked coin glittering in Noct's hand.

The subway station was busy with foot traffic, and Gladio found himself twitching at every cough, every scuff of shoes or rasp of breath. Noct seemed wary, too, constantly waving Gladio towards the side, twisting the cord that held the ring in his fingers. They stopped by the gates, and Noct breathed on the face of the coin.

"Ever played the hot and cold game?" he asked Gladio. He passed the coin to him, and Gladio felt a faint warmth on the face side of the coin. "The hotter that gets, the closer we are to what we need. Which right now, was wherever that woman went when she got... When whatever it was happened to her."

Gladio frowned at the memory of burning eyes and a snarling black maw, and pinched the coin.

As far as tracking spells went, it was a pretty inefficient system. They wove and wandered the station, garnering wary looks from those waiting for their train, and Gladio had to stop twice to ask Noct to confirm the heat of the coin. Finally, they made it up a service elevator and out into a road that led to a residential neighborhood. The coin grew warmer still when they passed an antique store, then cold again, making them double back. When they reached the alley behind the store, where old cardboard broke apart on the concrete, the coin was hot enough to burn.

"Right," Noct said. "So the daemonic trail starts here." He held out his hands, and a strand of light passed between them, crackling and hissing like a handheld bolt of lightning. Gladio stepped back, and Noct snorted. He snapped his fingers, and the light curled into a spiral, dropping to his feet to sink into the ground.

"It's a mapping spell," Noct said. "It should show us if anyone's been using magic in the area--" 

They both hissed in pain as the alley shone with a blinding light. Pools of it puddled over the cardboard, with strange, branching streams reaching out to a nearby fuse box, lamps, and power lines. Noct cursed and made a gesture with his hand, and the light faded. While Gladio blinked spots from his eyes, Noct ran for the fuse box.

"Was that supposed to happen?" Gladio asked.

"Sort of," Noct said. His fingers shook as he wrenched open the maintenance panel. A mess of melted wires greeted him. "Fuck. Whoever used magic here, they must've drained the whole street."

Gladio's skin prickled. He knew, in theory, that mages could borrow the Crystals magic through power lines and outlets, but the energy it took to drain a street...

"That should've killed them," Gladio said. "Whoever it was."

Noct said nothing.

"Right?" 

Noct closed the box. "I've done it," he said. "Not like this, but I've done it." He blinked hard. "But yeah, this looked like it happened all at once. It would've knocked whoever it was out, at least." He glanced behind him, then at Gladio. "They should still be here. No one can just get up and walk away after that."

Gladio looked around the alley, taking note of the collapsing fences, the bare concrete, the flowers growing at the back of the antique store. "You don't think?"

Noct looked to the door. "Worth a shot," he said.

The antique store was run by a woman with dark hair and an expression of perpetual boredom. She shrugged when Noct asked about anyone passing out in the past day, and rolled her shoulders at Gladio's mention of an outage.

"This place runs on a backup generator," she said. "But yeah. My neighbors are still in the dark. My Jo, she went out to see what was up, and there was just this little old lady having a fit in the alley. Unless she coughed the lights off, I got nothing for you."

"Thanks," Noct said. "That was, uh."

"Helpful," Gladio said. Noct shrugged.

Gladio's phone buzzed again, and he pulled it out, squinting in the dim light of the antique store. It was Cor. Almost every call, all fifteen of them, were Cor.

"Fuck me," Gladio whispered.

"No thanks," said Noct. Gladio stared, and he shoved his hands in his pockets, leaning back. "Your keepers find out that you're gone?"

Gladio chose not to dignify that with a response. 

If Cor's messages boded ill, the actual lecture he'd prepared for Gladio on his return was worse. Gladio hadn't been so thoroughly taken down since the first three weeks of bootcamp, and stood in wooden silence while Noct lounged against the wall behind him, grinning.

"Don't think I've forgotten you," Cor said, and Noct tilted his head graciously.

"Nice. That's twenty birthdays you owe me, then," Noct said. 

Gladio waited for Cor to dress him down. He'd certainly spared no smart-asses in the army, that was for sure. But Cor just met Noct's eyes, rubbed a knuckle on the bridge of his nose, and turned aside.

"If you don't want me tying you to the front steps of the Citadel, your highness, you will follow the proper protocols when you leave the palace," he finished. He shifted on his feet. "And if you still won't listen, I'll be forced to tell Iris."

Gladio blanched. "You wouldn't."

"Iris?" Noct asked. "The Princess? What kind of a threat is she supposed to be?"

"Never underestimate the power of a disappointed sibling, Noctis," Cor said.

"Yeah, well. Gladio'll need to leave tomorrow, because I have an appointment I can't afford to miss."

Cor's scowl twitched. "You don't have that luxury."

"Yeah? You don't let me go," Noct said, "and I'll leave Prince Charming to the daemons. See if I won't."

Cor looked from Gladio to Noctis. Again, Gladio waited for the inevitable refusal, and again, Cor broke. "Alright," he said. "But I'll join you."

"Great," Noct said, with a brittle smile. "It's a date."


	5. Chapter 5

That night, Gladio was locked in his suites with a mage.

“You’ll be monitored at all times,” Monica said, in the dry, no-nonsense tone Gladio knew to mean she’d lost her last nerve hours before, and was currently dreaming of being at home, surrounded by cats and taking the hottest bubble bath known to man. “If he tries to use magic on you, he will be placed under stasis. If he tries to leave, he will be placed under stasis. If he—“

“Breathes,” Noct said. Monica turned her cold gaze on him, and he held his hands up in surrender.

“This is for your own protection, your highness,” Monica said, ignoring Noct’s sideways grin. “Don’t make me regret siding with the king in this.”

Then she left Gladio and Noctis alone in Gladio’s entranceway, staring at the ornate wooden door as it clicked shut.

“Well,” Noct said. “ _She’s_ nice.”

Gladio turned from Noct, taking in the unfamiliar walls of his room. He’d dreamed of this moment. At the front, when he was caught in a volley of enemy fire and lay with his back against a flimsy wooden board, he’d turned to Prompto, who’d been taking potshots across the field before his ammo went out. _Silk sheets,_ he’d said, and Prompto shot him a flabbergasted look. _Other people dream of girls to get through this, Prompto. Me, I want my bed. Silk sheets, thick curtains, books piled up to here._ Prompto had laughed, and it became a private joke of theirs, mouthing the words _silk sheets_ before they charged the enemy lines. 

Now, Gladio lay his hand on the coverlet and wondered why he’d ever thought such a slippery fabric could be comfortable. Behind him, in the guest room he used mostly as a place to store his books, Noctis was conducting his own examination. He could hear him stumbling around, knocking into shelves and flapping out bedsheets. It wasn’t the way Gladio expected to come home.

None of it was.

He tried out the mattress. He pressed on his pillows, checking for give, and opened his dresser drawer. The books that waited for him belonged to a man three years younger, a man Gladio wasn’t sure he knew all too well. _Opus of the King. The Last Great Mage of Nidavellir._ Fantasies. Epics. Stories about men who went off to find their place in the world and came back to parades and flowers and women with willowy waists and long, dark hair. None of the books talked about what came after. They didn’t mention the feeling of tripping down an extra step in a stair he thought he knew, of collapsing into an emptiness that stretched further with every desperate drag of his fingertips at the edge. The heroes came home changed, and the world had enough kindness to change around them. 

“This place is bigger than my old house,” Noct said, and for a moment, Gladio _hated_ him. It made no sense: Clearly, Noctis didn’t want to be there, didn’t have a choice but to dog Gladio’s steps, but resentment made a vice around Gladio’s heart, and he slammed the dresser drawer shut with a bang. “Wow.”

“Can you just…” Gladio gestured to the bed in the guest room, where Noct was already sprawled like a child making astral shapes in the snow. “It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah,” Noct said. “And some of us spent the morning in jail.”

Gladio looked to the cuff around Noct’s bare ankle, glittering black as the ring hanging from his neck. “They treat you okay?” It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it as soon as the words left his tongue, and he and Noct shared blank looks, running thin over the space between them.

“Sure.” Noct said at last. He pulled back the sheets and clambered inside. “They gave me tea and a massage. Turned down the mani-pedi, though. Fuck, this mattress is soft.”

“Hey,” Gladio said. Noct rolled onto his side. “About that appointment tomorrow. I got my own shit I have to do.”

“Some things are important.” Noct’s voice was a slow, lazy drawl, and he disappeared under the covers, becoming nothing more than a lump of cotton in the other room. 

“More important than princes?” Gladio asked, but Noct didn’t answer. Gladio waited for a minute, watching the rise and fall of the blankets in the guest room, and turned to shut out the light.

 

\---

 

The next morning, Gladio staggered to his bathroom to find it already occupied. Noctis’ leg was draped over the edge of the tub, wreathed in steam, the black cuff clinking on the tile as he moved. Bubbles cascaded past the shower curtain, and Gladio could just spot a tuft of black hair through the mess of lavender and foam. 

“I got two meetings this morning,” Gladio said, turning on the tap in the sink. 

“Sounds like a _you_ problem,” Noct said. The water sloshed, and Gladio swiped at the mirror to check his teeth. His face looked haggard, red with steam and in need of a shave. “Call me when it’s over.”

“Some bodyguard you’re turning out to be,” Gladio said. Noct snorted, and some of the bubbles were pushed aside to reveal bright blue eyes, made heavy with sleep. 

“Do you _have_ to? Don’t you have like, a body double or something?” Gladio almost smiled at that, and Noct shrugged, reminding him a little of the man he’d been on the subway, well before this whole mess started. 

In the end, it turned out that body doubles weren’t necessary. The meetings were cancelled. None of the Council wanted to meet in the Citadel longer than necessary after the death of Reus, and fewer still had an interest in speaking to the prince who’d been called out by the daemon their colleague had become. Gladio was left wandering aimless down the halls, Noct slouching at his side, feeling like a stranger in his own home.

“Maybe we can track down Reus,” Noct said, when they turned down yet another strangely empty hallway. Even the pages were scarce, skipping around Gladio like he carried the plague, casting fearful glances at the mage beside him. “He worked here, right?”

“I guess,” Gladio said. “Iris knew him.” _Shit. Iris._ He stopped abruptly, making Noct stumble a few steps ahead before slowing down, and jerked his head to a side stair. “We should probably see her. She’s gonna… She worries, and…”

“She’s family,” Noct said. “I get it.”

They found Iris in the library, sitting in a window seat with a copy of a well-worn romance manga. She jumped at the sound of their footsteps and shoved the book under a cushion, but Gladio got a good look at the women on the cover, surrounded by flowers and hearts and an odd cat-like mascot. 

“Gladdy!” She tumbled off the seat and threw herself into Gladio’s arms. “Gods, you look _awful._ That scar is something else. Are you okay? Who’s your friend? Is he the mage Daddy was talking about?”

Gladio heaved Iris in the air, and she squealed, legs kicking. “Glad you’re safe, doofus,” he said. “And yeah, this is Noctis.”

Iris looked Noctis up and down with a critical eye, which was somewhat offset by the fact that she was still dangling in Gladio’s grip. “Kinda short for a bodyguard.”

“Not my fault you come from a family of giants,” Noctis said, and Iris grinned. 

“Wow, rude. I like him.” She slapped Gladio’s arm, and he set her down. “I thought you had a meeting today?”

“They were cancelled,” Gladio said, trying to force the bitterness from his voice. It didn’t work: Iris looked at him sharply, her smile wavering. “We’re thinking of, uh. It’s probably too soon, but—“

“We were wondering about the guy who died,” Noct said. “The one who turned into a daemon. We want to know where he went that day.”

“Oh.” Iris’ face fell. “Mr. Reus. He. Um. He was in his office most of the day, but it’s been blocked off.” She twisted her hands together. “I can take you, if you want.”

“We don’t have to,” Gladio said.

“Thanks, that’d be great,” said Noct.

Iris nodded. Gladio tried to level a glare in Noct’s direction, but Noct ignored him, walking alongside Iris as she led them up a narrow stair towards the fifteenth floor. They were an odd pair: Noct wasn’t that much taller than Iris, maybe by a few inches at most, but he insinuated himself at her side with the same easy grace with which he’d taken Gladio through the turnstyle at the station or waved to neighbors in the slums. He leaned down to whisper something, and Iris smiled weakly, turning back to look at Gladio.

“Yeah,” she said. “He is.”

“He’s what?” Gladio asked. 

“Nothing,” Iris and Noct said, and smiled. Gladio bristled a little, and sped up to overtake them, pushing Noct out of the way. Iris rolled her eyes, but took Gladio’s hand all the same. 

When they reached the fifteenth floor, they found the hallway cordoned off with bright red tape and a man in the uniform of the Crownsguard standing in the center, looking bored. He spotted the three of them and held out a hand. 

“No one allowed past this line, your highnesses,” he said. “King’s orders.”

Noct leaned over to Iris. “Distract him,” he whispered. Iris glanced at Gladio, then stepped forward.

“Mr. Pelna!” she said. “How’s your husband doing?”

“Uh.” The guard flushed a dark pink. “He’s… he’s better, thank you.”

“Did he like my flowers? I had them sent last week, but I wasn’t sure if they were the right arrangement.” Iris bounced on her toes, and Gladio stepped in front of Noct, blocking him from view. Noct twirled his finger, and a small line of light emerged, just as it had the day before. 

“The flowers were nice. He couldn’t have the chocolate, though.”

“Oh, no! I’m so sorry, I’ll remember next time.”

The line swirled into a circle and descended into the carpet. For a second, light flared along the walls, mapping out a ghostly network of wires, but there were no signs of pooling magic as there had been in the alley. The light faded in a second, but the guard was too flustered by Iris’ aggressive show of charm to notice. 

“Well!” Iris said, when she saw Noct and Gladio relax. “That’s good to know. We’ll be. You know. Going.”

The guard smiled auncertainly and raised his hand in a wave as Iris ran back to join Gladio and Noctis. 

“What’d you do?” she whispered, when they were back in the relative safety of the stairway. Noct shrugged. 

“Nothing, really,” he said. “Whatever turned that guy into a daemon, it didn’t happen there.”

Iris frowned, tugging at her bottom lip with her teeth. When she looked up, her eyes were hard, and she looked so much like her father that Gladio almost straightened to attention. “I hope you find out soon,” she said. “And when you do, if you find whoever… or whatever… did that to Mr. Reus? Let me know so I can kick their ass myself.”

“Iris!” 

“Sure thing,” Noct said. Iris held out her hand, and he took it, squeezing her fingers tight.

“It’s a promise,” she said. “Don’t break it.”

“Caelums don’t break their promises,” Noct said. He spoke to Iris, but he looked at Gladio, and in the dim light of the hallway, Gladio had to suppress a shudder. The button to the stasis cuff was a dull weight in his pocket, threatening to drag him down through the floor and into the chamber of the Crystal, where Noctis’ father had broken the most sacred trust he’d ever given, and laid hands on the heart of Insomnia itself.

 

\---

 

Noct’s long-awaited appointment was in the afternoon, just after the lunch rush. Cor met them in the parking lot, where they fell into an undercover Crownsguard van and buckled in while Cor took the wheel. Noct kept staring at his phone, tracking the seconds it took for Cor and Gladio to get situated and skimming idly through apps.

“Alright,” Cor said, turning from the driver’s seat. His face, normally expressionless, was twisted in a look verging on pain. “We aren’t being watched in here. Tell me where we’re going, Caelum.”

Noct didn’t look up. “Fourtieth and Shine Street.” Cor cursed under his breath. 

“Fourtieth and Shine?” Gladio looked from Noct to Cor. “What am I missin’ here?”

Cor turned away, and his knuckles tightened on the wheel. “It’s a prison,” he said. “It’s where Noctis would’ve gone if he hadn’t been assigned to you. They have a whole wing there, specially made.”

“For mages,” Noct said. Cor turned on the ignition, and the engine roared to life. “That’s what Cor isn’t saying. It’s a prison for mages.”

They drove in silence, navigating slowly through midday traffic while Gladio stared at Noct, Noct stared at his phone, and Cor only barely managed to stare at the road. Noct stubbornly refused to meet Gladio’s questioning gaze, and he hunched in his seat, turning his shoulder to him so he couldn’t see what he typed on his phone. 

The prison itself was a small building, hardly wide enough to bear notice between the festival grounds on one side and a row of gas stations on the other. Noctis sat up straight as Cor parked in the visitor’s lot, and Gladio raised his brows as Noct ran a hand over the ring, turning it invisible against his faded black shirt. 

“I’ll stay here,” Cor said, in a short, choked voice. Noct shrugged. 

“Coward.”

Gladio stiffened, but Cor didn’t even flinch. He just looked away, gaze fixed on the wire fence surrounding the prison, fingers white on the wheel. Noct scoffed and shoved open the door of the van.

“You staying, or what?” he said, looking to Gladio. “I don’t care either way, but it’ll be more paperwork.”

“I’ll go,” Gladio said. He wasn’t about to sit this out, not when Cor was on the verge of a breakdown in the driver’s seat. He followed after Noct, shutting the door behind him, and looked back just once to find Cor on his phone, shakily typing out a text. 

“Maybe a prince’ll make the process go easier,” Noct said, as they crossed the lot towards the front gate. “You can say it’s a charity thing.”

“Charity things take more paperwork than you can imagine,” Gladio said, and Noct groaned. 

Still, Noct may have had a point. When the guards at the gate saw Gladio’s ID, they rushed to usher them through five rooms of security lines, filled with people who looked up at Gladio and Noct with slow, bored expressions before turning back to newspapers or empty hands. Noct stuck to Gladio’s side like a burr, a bemused grin on his face, as guard after guard assured them that “It’ll be just a minute, your highness,” or “sorry for the wait, your highness.”

“Damn,” Noct said, when they’d passed through security at last. “I could get used to this.” 

The final room was a large one, sectioned off with a thick pane of glass that crawled with anti-magic code at the top and sides. Booths were set in a line along the glass on either side, and Noct walked up to one, pulling out a plastic chair and drumming his fingers on the plastic tabletop before him. Gladio dragged over another chair from the next booth over, and was about to sit down when Noct shot to his feet. 

A door on the other side of the room opened, and a guard walked in, followed by an inmate in a black uniform. The inmate was an older woman, possibly in her forties, with long, dark hair shot through with silver. Her face was heart-shaped, her high cheekbones framed by two locks of hair cut short, and her eyes were a bright, clear blue. She smiled, and Noct’s hands clenched on the table. She reached the booth on the other side of theirs and tapped on the glass in front of Noct’s face. 

“You’re late, darling,” she said. 

Noct lifted his own hand to the glass, as though he were trying to touch the woman’s cheek, and lowered it back to the table. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse, lighter than usual, broken and far too young. 

“Hey, Mom.”


	6. Chapter 6

“Sit down, Noctis.”

Noctis sat. Behind him, Gladio fell into his chair with a heavy thud. Noct’s mother looked his way, gave him a quick once-over that seemed to drag out all of Gladio’s faults for a brief examination, and pressed her lips together in a sardonic smile that was far too familiar.

“Darling,” she said. “You seem to have picked up a prince.”

Noct refused to look Gladio’s way. “It’s complicated, Mom. But he isn’t—”

“They keep photos of the royal family on the walls in this place. Quite a striking bone structure they have. Try another one.” Noct tugged at his collar, and her eyes narrowed. “Your clothes are a mess. What’s happened? What has he done?”

“I didn’t touch him,” Gladio protested, and found himself quailing under her glare. He was grateful, desperately grateful, for the thick glass between them, and tried not to shrink into his plastic chair.

“Oh, didn’t you?” Noct’s mother lifted her chin. “Noctis, I require an explanation.”

“There’s a lot I can’t say,” Noct said, and looked up at the security camera that swept the room. His mother made a gesture with her hand, a sign that looked too deliberate to be a nervous tic, and Noct’s chin jerked a fraction.

“Very well,” she said. She crossed her hands on the desktop in front of her. “How did you meet the prince?”

“At the subway,” Noct said. “He was attacked by, uh. Something.”

“Something you can't talk about?”

Noct shifted so that his back was to Gladio, but Gladio could see the tips of his ears redden. “Yeah. I, uh, I fought it off.”

Panic flashed in his mother’s eyes. “Were you hurt?” she asked. Her hand went to the glass, as though she could push through it and hold him through sheer will alone. “Did you use too much energy? How’s your heart? Have you checked your breathing?”

“Mom, I’m fine.” Noct flushed darker still. “But it drew attention.”

“ _Noctis!_ ”

“I didn’t know he was the _prince!_ ” Noct threw his hands in the air. “Not at first! I thought he was just some, I don’t know, some soldier who didn’t want to be recognized. The Crownsguard got me before I could run.”

His mother went still, with the sudden, tense silence of a predator about to strike. Her gaze found Gladio’s and held him there. “And what did the Crownsguard do?”

“Mom, I’m okay.”

“ _What did the Crownsguard do?_ ”

“The king made a deal with me.” The words burst out of Noct like a horrible laugh, all breath and grinding teeth. “He said if I kept Gladio safe, he’d reverse the charges against Dad. Against _you._ ”

“No.”

“He said he didn’t know you were arrested, Mom,” Noct said. His fingernails squeaked against the plastic desktop. “He said this kind of thing doesn’t reach him, but he can issue a pardon. You can come _home—_ ”

“And find you dead,” his mother said. Her voice trembled. “Like Regis. Or worse, corrupted. Used against us, another lackey in his crusade against magic, like that _scum-sucking turncoat._ ”

“No one’s corrupting me, Mom.” Noct sounded younger than he’d ever been, a frantic whine building in the back of his throat. “I’m not like that. I’m doing this for you.”

“You’ve done enough for me,” his mother said. “ _Regis_ has done enough for _him._ Let them fall. I will not have them take my son, not like they’ve taken my husband, my _brother—_ ”

“Alright, now.” A guard stepped forward, grasping Noct’s mother by the arm. She wrenched out of his grip, and he held her shoulder. “That’s enough. We’ve made a concession by letting you visit outside your scheduled time, young man. If you cause an incident…”

“I didn’t.” Noct surged up from his chair. His eyes were red, tears threatening to spill over heavy lashes. “I won’t. We’re just talking.”

“Leave them alone,” Gladio said. The look Noct’s mother gave him then was thick with hatred, but the guard stepped back, letting her sink into her chair. Gladio watched him retreat to a safe distance, and found that both Caelums were staring, waiting for an explanation.

“I didn’t know,” Gladio said. “I thought Noct didn’t have a family. No one…” He wet his lips. “No one’s told me anything.”

“It’s true,” Noct said. “He’s kind of a dumbass, but he’s not his dad.”

“Then perhaps he’ll prove to be better than him,” Noct’s mother said. She turned her chair towards Gladio. “Young man.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The phrase slipped out in self-defense, drilled into him through years of training on the field. Noct’s mother pinched the bridge of her nose, a gesture so like Cor’s that Gladio could almost see him there, caught in the line of her brow.

“When this is done,” she said, “When whatever threat posed to you is finished, you will let my son disappear.” Noct made to protest, and she raised a finger to the glass. “You will not try to contact him again. You will not speak to him. If he passes you in the street, juggling raw magic in broad daylight, you will look the other way. The Amicitias have done enough harm to our family over the years, and it will end with him. Promise me this.”

Gladio looked to Noct, his face flushed, tears trailing his cheeks, hands clenched tight on the booth table. He looked at Noct’s mother, her face made hard with fear, hand pressed to the glass, unable to touch a son who just the day before had his face ground into a subway floor by a man in a Crownsguard uniform.

“I promise,” he said.

“I almost believe you.” Noct’s mother turned from him, and looked to Noct. “End this quickly, Noctis. It doesn’t matter if I’m pardoned. What matters is that you’re _safe. Happy._ ”

Noct tried to keep his voice low, but Gladio heard it all the same, and his throat went tight. “Not without you.”

Gladio hadn’t seen his own mother in over eight years. She’d died when Iris was too young to remember more of her than her dark curls and a rare smile, but Gladio still remembered the callouses on her palms when she held him, her laugh when they sparred in the practice courts, the way that the Crownsguard called her “Commander” first and “Queen” second, as though her role among their ranks was higher than royalty. When she died, taken out in an Imperial raid on the border of Tenebrae, Gladio was told that there wasn’t enough to bring home. Her coffin was empty, and her grave held no place in Gladio’s heart the way it did Iris. He was closest to her in a fight, when his heart thudded too fast and the bite of metal stung in his mouth. He would never touch her again, but he could feel her warmth on his hand when he held a sword, when his muscles strained and his breath went short.

Noctis pressed his forehead to the glass, and his mother kissed it.

“Be safe,” she said.

“I’m always safe,” Noct said, and his smile shook as much as her own.

Noct walked a few feet ahead of Gladio as they left the prison. His shoulders were hunched forward, neck bowed, and as soon as they had access to their phones again, he was glued to an app that flashed with bright colors and squawked like a chocobo every time he scored a point. Gladio followed him like a large, awkward shadow, trying to piece together the fragments of what he’d just heard.

He waited until they were seated in the back of Cor’s van before he broke.

“What,” he said, “the _hell_ —”

“I can explain.” Noct and Gladio stared at one another. In the front seat, Cor Leonis was worrying a smooth line over the wheel of the van with his bare hands, and his gaze kept flicking between Gladio and Noct, not quite willing to settle on one for more than a moment. For a man who had been as much an uncle to Gladio since birth, Gladio had never seen Cor look so scattered. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

“Noct’s mother did that,” Gladio said, and Cor’s body went tight.

“Don’t be too hard on him,” Noct said. “Old habits die hard. Don’t they, Uncle Cor?”

For a minute, all Gladio could hear was his own breathing, and the soft shuff of Cor’s hands squeezing the leather grip of the wheel.

“Cor?” Gladio held the side of the van, grounding himself as the world tilted out of true. “Marshal?”

“Thirty years ago,” Cor said, in a low, ragged voice. “I didn't go by Leonis.”

 

\---

 

He didn't go by much of anything, really. Cor was mostly known as “hey, you!” in the lower city, usually followed by a string of curses that Cor was pretty proud to inspire, all things considered. He was the pair of hands at the end of a stolen bag of jewelry, the worker of quick, useful magics that involved the use of car doors and deadbolts, and the no-good, scruffy-haired younger brother of the star of the lower city, Aulea Venan.

Aulea was only eighteen when Regis Caelum came into their lives, but Cor remembered it with the dawning clarity of a man at the edge of a beach when the tide fell away. Regis was beautiful and polished as a blade, wearing sharp suits from the Citadel and wielding magic that would have killed another man to bear. He spoke of the king and queen as though he knew them, went on long tirades about compromise and legal action and the right of a mage to use their skills for the benefit of Lucis, which Cor thought was a pretty way of saying “a clerk-Mage for the army.” He just rolled his eyes and looked away, and waited for Regis to move on.

Aulea, though, she took Regis’ dry, dull words and put a fire to them. Cor barely recognized her. She was consumed, pacing their small rooms in the lower city as though possessed, talking about protests and demonstrations and invisible lines in the city. She joined others like her, people with a spark in their eyes and a jittery restlessness to their bones, and was among the first to be arrested in the riots of 733. 

That was when Cor met Clarus. He was with Regis while Cor waited for Aulea to be processed out, his brown hair down to his shoulders, smiling at Regis’ words with the easy way of an old friend. He gestured for Cor to sit with them, and Cor stumbled over like a puppet on a line. 

Within an hour, he understood how Aulea could be overtaken so quickly. Clarus wasn't only charming, like Regis. He had an iron control, a will that could bend steel, and proved to be a hand with a blade the likes of which Cor had never seen. Cor spent more time with him and Regis, leaving Aulea to her resistance, to her quiet, whispering back rooms and screaming matches with police. He learned how to fight, and magic seemed useless and unimportant when faced with the sort of power it took to hold back another’s blade with his own.

Then Regis got worse. He and Clarus would fight long into the evening, sometimes calling the Crownsguard in from their posts down the hall. He started retreating from Clarus, spending more time on his own, in the Citadel libraries. More than once, Cor caught him sitting there, hands shaking as he sat over a map of the city, tracing lines over side streets and circling the sunburst pattern of the Citadel. He even saw Regis wandering the lower city more than once, peering into peoples’ eyes and asking quiet, furtive questions that had them backing away in alarm.

Then he’d disappeared one day while Cor and Clarus sparred in the training hall, and the lights of the Citadel flickered out.

The run to the Crystal was the longest in Cor’s life. Longer than the times he’d run from the guard through the market district, longer than his morning runs with Clarus, longer than his lifetime of staggering in Aulea’s shadow. When they reached the Crystal chamber at last, and he saw Regis standing there, trying to drain the life out of the stone that kept the daemons of the wastes from entering the city, Cor knew that he had to make a choice. 

“And he chose Clarus,” Noct said. “Over his own family.”

“Regis would have died,” Cor said. He twisted around in his seat, and for a moment, Gladio could see Aulea’s younger brother in his face, earnest and heartbroken, eyes pinched with pain. “He would have died bringing down the Wall, and Aulea. Aulea disowned _me._ I didn't choose to leave. I tried to find you, after she hurt you, tried to give you a home…”

“She never hurt me,” Noct said. His voice rose dangerously high, and the ring, visible again around its chain, disappeared in his fist.

“ _She left you for dead, Noctis._ ” Cor’s shout echoed in the van, and the silence that followed was breathless and hoarse. “Her magic got away from her. She drained a whole city street, and the blowback hit you, and _that’s_ why she’s in there. That’s why you have to go to the shittiest back-street prison to see her. That’s--”

“You’d know better if you fucking tried harder,” Noct said. “How long did you look for me before you gave up, huh?”

“Eight years,” Cor said. Noct fell back in his seat, his head thumping against the wall. “Every time I set foot in the lower city, the people there… They wouldn't even look at me. Neighbors I grew up with. Friends. People I thought were family. All because I’d betrayed someone who wasn't even one of us to begin with, some upstart punk with his head in the clouds.”

“Dad wasn't a _punk,_ ” Noct shouted. “And Mom never. She didn't. You don't know what happened. You weren't there.”

“I wanted to be,” Cor said. “Gods know I wanted to, Noctis.”

“ _Fuck_ you.” Noct lurched across the van and settled next to Gladio, letting his body cast a shadow between himself and Cor. “Go back to pretending we don't know each other. You're good at that.”

“Don't think I can, kid.”

Noct shrank against Gladio’s shoulder, and Gladio stared at the back of Cor’s head as he turned over the engine.

“You were a mage,” he said. Cor grunted.

“That's what you get out of this?” Noct asked. “Really?”

“Sorry,” Gladio said. “It's a lot to process. How about… Look.” He turned to Noct. “It’s been a shit day. Let's agree on that.”

“I’m not arguing.”

“So let’s do something that’ll take your mind off it,” he said. “I have a feelin’ that my schedule’s gonna be a whole lot of free time anyways.”

“What’d you have in mind?” Noct asked. “Tell me it isn't working out. I don't _do_ working out.”

“Better,” Gladio said, and Noct’s frown deepened. “There’s this private park down in the Citadel gardens, Amicitias only. Me and you? We’re gonna go camping.”

Cor and Noct groaned at once, and Gladio grinned, slinging an arm around Noct’s shoulders as the main streets of the city fell away, drawing them ever closer to the spires of the Citadel.


	7. Chapter 7

When Gladio's great-great grandmother was Queen, she installed a koi pond in the middle of the royal gardens. They were gifts from her lover, a poet from Tenebrae, and she spared no expense in their upkeep: There were two waterfalls, tastefully arranged flowers planted behind the stone borders, and a wide, grassy space where she could sun herself and watch the small, imported fish go swirling about under the surface.

The koi Gladio and Noct saw were massive, spoiled creatures that crowded up to the edge of the pool the moment they arrived, mouthing at the open air in hopes that their feeding time had been moved up. Noct went straight for them, dropping his share of the camping supplies with a thump, and lay on his belly to watch.

"You gonna help set up camp?" Gladio asked. Noct stared into the eyes of a fish Gladio actually remembered, an orange koi named Dr. Butts (Iris' choice, not his), and pursed his lips.

"Don't see why," Noct said. He continued pulling faces at the fish, and Gladio stopped for a minute to watch him, grinning a little. No matter how much Noct complained, he knew it was a better plan than having dinner with the king, or rattling around the Citadel while Cor skirted the shadows, tense and apologetic. Noct didn't need apologies. Not right now. He needed space, and room to breathe, and time--something neither of them had to spare. So Gladio supposed they'd have to make do with koi.

Gladio was halfway through setting up a tent on his great-grandmother's viewing circle when Noctis spoke up.

"You know," he said. His voice was soft. Some of the koi, disappointed by the lack of food, were peeling away to more interesting corners of the pond. "I don't have to tell you anything."

"I know," Gladio said. 

"Good." Noct rolled onto his side, pillowing his head with an arm. "Because it isn't your business."

"That's up for debate, but sure." Gladio hammered in a tent peg. "Whatever you want."

Noct squinted at him. Behind him, one of the koi let out an insistent burble. "You just met my mom."

"Yep. Seemed nice."

Noct sat up. "In jail." He had the look of someone with their nail at the edge of a bandage, caught in a last agonizing second of consideration. "And my uncle works for your dad."

"I was there, Noct, I know."

Gladio finished setting up the tent. Noct turned back to the koi. Above them, the sky darkened to a muted purple, smudged with clouds dark as smoke.

"Dad used to say the war was a waste of time," Noct said. Gladio raised his eyebrows. "He said the real danger was closer to home. I never knew what he meant. Maybe poverty. He talked about that a lot. Mom thinks he meant the king was corrupt, or a dictator, or something."

Gladio opened his mouth, unable to let that slide, but what Noct said next lodged the words in his throat.

"But I think he still loved him." Noct met Gladio's gaze and held it, daring him to look away. "He sent letters to him 'til the end. Watched the mail every afternoon. I hated it. Hated the king. It wasn't right, Dad being in two places like that, always, always talking about how Clarus has to _know,_ Clarus would do this, Clarus would say..."

He drew his knees up. "Did your dad even care?"

Gladio shrugged. "He didn't send him to prison for trying to drain the Crystal. That counts for something."

"Dad had a _reason,_ " Noct said.

"Yeah? He ever tell you what it was?"

Noct fell silent. He pulled the black ring from under his shirt and twisted it in his hands, running his fingers over the stone on the top.

"Something was freaking him out," he said. "It got... worse. He loved Mom. Loved me. But he had to... do something. I don't know. One of the guys that hangs around the walkways, he found him in the _sewer._ Heart attack, Mom said. Really fucked him up, the guy who found him. He kind of... looks out for me, sometimes, now, 'cause..." His voice trailed off to a mumble, and his forefinger slipped into the center of the ring. He jerked, dropping it, and it banged against his chest. "Well. Then the thing with Mom happened."

"Cor said--"

"I know what Cor said." Noct dug his heels in the grass. "It didn't happen that way. She didn't _hurt_ me."

Gladio draped his arms over his knees. His father always said he had a silver tongue; A talent for diplomacy, an easy laugh that put others at ease. But that was only partly true. Gladio did best when things were already going well, when morale was high and all he needed to do was nudge people in the right direction. When shit went down, with mortar flying and monsters charging over ditches that took too long to build for all that they collapsed like sandcastles, Gladio froze. He went wooden, or started shouting, too many thoughts clattering around in his head, clamoring for attention.

He looked at Noct's hunched shoulders, his wrinkled shirt, the way the toes of his boots creased and flexed.

"You wanna see something cool?" Noct said, twisting around. "Something magic?"

"Honestly? No."

Noct snorted. It wasn't much of a laugh, but it was something. "You'll like this one," he said. "Mom taught me. I can probably use it on you the next time a daemon tries to kick you into a wall."

"Wow. Thanks." Gladio sat back, and Noct raised an arm, making a shape in the air. Then, like frost spreading over a window, a plane of light appeared over Noct's arm, stretching and morphing until he held a wall of interlocking panes of unreal glass, glimmering as he moved.

"A shield," he said. "Not bad, huh?"

Gladio reached out to touch it, and was surprised to find it hard, smooth as a shell under his fingers. "Could've used it at the front, for sure," he said.

"Amazing how useful magic can be," Noct said, and Gladio rolled his eyes. Noct dispelled the shield and shook out his arm, casting off sparks.

"I don't want this," he said. 

"I know," Gladio said. "You don't have to guard me, I'll be fine."

"No, you won't. And that isn't it. I mean..." Noct waved his arms expansively. "This. What our dads did. What they left us. I don't want it. I want to... I want to do things different, this time."

"Different how?"

Noct raked his hands through his hair. "Between us. I didn't hate you when I didn't know who you were." Gladio smirked, and he kicked at him. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah," Gladio said. "I do." He extended a hand. "So. Hey."

Noct raised an eyebrow. "What."

"I'm Gladio." Gladio held his hand out palm-up. "Daemons are kinda trying to kill me these days."

Noct grinned, and slapped his hand down on Gladio's. "Noct," he said. "I'm a mage. Killed two daemons already, so I think we'll probably work out."

"Think so," Gladio said. They smiled at each other, a little sheepishly, and it took Gladio a moment to pull his hand away. "You want food? I got canned everything."

"Hell yeah," Noct said. 

They ate under the stars, lobbing chocolate covered cherries at each other to the sound of the pond waterfalls gurgling away. It wasn't until they'd crawled into the tent, sprawling on opposite sides with the remains of a deck of cards between them, when something tickled the back of Gladio's mind.

"Wait," he said, into the dark. "What do you mean, _two?_ "


	8. Chapter 8

Noctis was eight, and he knew he wasn't supposed to be out on the street alone.

He knew he wasn't supposed to be _anywhere_ alone. Not after Uncle Zoo, one of the guys who used to sit and drink on the stairs, came back from the sewers with Noct's dad hanging in his arms. Not since one of the other guys covered Noct's face and spun him round, pressing him to a filthy, heaving chest. Not since Noct's mom came running out of the bar she worked at, wailing like a wounded animal, her voice echoing off the walls of the slums.

Not since Noct's life ended.

He hadn't been to school in a week. His mom thought he was still going, but Noct just took a sharp turn at the gate and spent most of the day wandering the city, ducking into new, curious hiding places every time an adult looked at him too closely. He learned which neighborhood had eyes peering from behind sparkling windows, which didn't care, which ones housed drug dealers or college students or ex military guys like Uncle Zoo and Uncle Bee and Shaky, who did their time and were left to find their own way home. 

Noct's dad always stopped to talk to the uncles, when he passed. He called them the Professors, because they were always debating some book or another, and they called him _kid_ and asked how his wife's revolution was going. Noct's mom always pinched her lips at that, but Noct thought they were nice. Nowadays, they were always keeping an extra eye out for him, especially Uncle Zoo, who seemed to take it personally, now.

But Noct managed to ditch them this time, at least. The problem was, he'd also managed to ditch his last known road marker, and he was in a part of town he hadn't visited before, full of winding streets and little cookie-cutter houses, complete with matching window boxes. The sun was starting to go down, and Noct knew that if he didn't get home soon, Nyx or Lib or one of his other million babysitters would come home, and then they'd have to run to the bar and tell his mom that Noct was missing. Again.

Noct twisted his father's ring on its chain around his neck. That was another thing he wasn't allowed to have: An untraceable, undetectable piece of crafted magic so dangerous, his dad used to say, that he only wore it when there was no other option. 

He'd been wearing it when he died. It shone on his bloody left hand, and Noct had bent over it, dragging it away before anyone else could catch on.

Above him, the street lamps flickered.

"Noctis!"

Noct ducked his head, looking to the stucco walls on either side of the alley. There weren't any places to hide--He was stuck standing right in the open, blinking like a rabbit in the sights of a fox, as his mom rounded the corner with a coin pressed between her forefinger and thumb. Oh, heck. A tracking spell. She must've gotten it off of Mr. Scientia.

"Hey, mom," he said.

"How on earth did you get all the way out here?" His mother slipped the coin in her pocket and dropped to a knee, holding him by the shoulders for inspection. 

"I walked," Noct said. "Sorry."

"I got a call from your school," his mother said, and Noct felt the blood drain from his face. "Noctis. I know things are... I know they're hard, right now, but we both need to try, okay? I need to go to work, and you need to go to school, and we'll take it one day at a time until things start to feel better."

Noct squirmed. He didn't like the way her voice shook, or the hurt in her face as she spoke. He hadn't meant to hurt her, sneaking out like this. He just wanted to... to...

A high, thin shriek echoed from the next street over, and Noct jumped. His mother pulled him close, rising to her feet, but she was barely standing upright when the street lamp on the far end of the road went out. There was a whole string of pops, like glass breaking, and Noct edged around her as someone came stumbling around the corner.

More like some _thing._ They had pale, greasy skin, fading into an oil slick of colors at their distended belly, which was latched to the body of a massive spider. It loomed over Noct and his mother, skittering closer, red eyes fixed on Noct.

A daemon.

"Gods save us," Noct's mother whispered, and spread out her hands. A rope of fire coiled there, twisting out like a whip. "Stay behind me, Noctis."

The first lash of the fire whip caught the daemon around the first two legs, making it hiss and shriek. It stumbled forward, and Noct's mother sent a pulse of flame along the length of the whip, trying to set the daemon on fire. But it didn't burn. It just kept coming, hobbling forward on four legs, dragging its body along the concrete. Noct's mother was sweating, her jaw clenched, and when the creature was close enough to touch, she released her spell and threw up a wall.

The first blow of the creature's body was powerful enough to send her to her knees. The shield held, but it sparked on contact, something Noct knew was a bad sign. He held his mother from behind and stared up into the slathering, snarling face of the daemon.

"Mom," he whispered.

"Run, baby," his mother hissed back. "Baby, you have to run."

The shield sparked again, and she sat up on her knees, leaning into it. She was using her own life to power it, Noct realized, watching the color bleed from her skin into the shield. He curled a hand around the ring.

"Please," his mother gasped.

The daemon reared back for another blow, and Noct knew, just knew, that this one would kill her. He stepped back, and his mother's shoulders slumped.

"It's okay, Mom," he said, in a quavering, high voice. "I'll protect you."

And then, just as the daemon began to surge forward one last time, Noct put on his father's ring.

 

\---

 

"Woke up at the station," Noct said, lying on his back in the tent. He twisted the ring in his fingers, the chain glinting and clinking as it moved. "I killed the daemon, alright. Also took out most of a city block. Mom told them it was her, but they didn't believe us when we said there was a daemon. A daemon, in Insomnia? No, more likely some mage went nuts and attacked her son."

He tucked the ring under his shirt. "They were gonna send me to a foster home, so I just, you know. Made myself invisible and ran for it."

"You can do that?" Gladio asked, sitting up on one elbow. Noct shrugged.

"I throw up after, but sure."

Gladio tried to suppress a shudder at the thought of mages walking unseen through the city. "There's something I don't get, though," he said, and Noct rolled over to face him. "You said you took out the power for a block, but the lights went out the next street over, right? And that happened _before_ the daemon showed up."

"Yeah." Noct's mouth twisted. "Just like that woman we tracked. From the subway." He sat up. "You're saying someone else might have a ring? Something like mine?"

"Maybe," Gladio said. "I bet it takes a lot of magic to make a daemon."

"And there's magic in the power lines," Noct whispered. "Fuck. Who would _want_ to make a daemon, though?"

"Dunno," Gladio said. "Someone who wants the crystal. The daemons kept going on about the stone when they attacked me. Did yours talk?"

Noct shook his head. "They just wanted to kill us. But maybe they wanted the ring. It's possible. If they were the same person, which, I mean, that's a stretch. But if they were, then something happened recently that gave them the power to do this and live."

"Wish we knew what," Gladio said. 

Noct rolled over. "Don't worry, your highness," he said. "Between my brains and my brawn, we'll figure it out."

"Really."

Noct flashed a grin, and Gladio covered his face with both hands. 

"Humble, too," Noct said, and Gladio groaned, half laughing, as Noct leaned over to pat him on the shoulder. "Don't worry, big guy," he said, still grinning. "You can be my moral support."


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -slinks in several months late with an update-

Gladio woke early, stirred by the flicker of light behind his eyes, and the sound of water sloshing softy in the distance. He opened his eyes to the grey light of early morning, and turned to face Noct, but Noct's sleeping bag was empty. Gladio sighed and sat up, groaning as his sore muscles protested, and stared out through the dim shadows of the campsite.

There was a man in the middle of the koi pond.

There was a man in the middle of the koi pond, and his hair was black and feathered.

There was a man in the middle of the koi pond, and his hair was black and feathered, and his eyes were hollow pits in a sunken skull, and his suit hung filthy and tattered from stiff limbs. His hands curled in a mockery of a beckoning wave, and his teeth creaked open to call out with a voice that was all too human--

_Noctis_

_Noctis_

Noct was knee-deep in the water already, trudging towards him with his eyes half open. His head was lolling on his neck, and when the water sucked at his waist, he raised a hand to the corpse hovering just over the surface of the pond.

Gladio, tangled in his sleeping bag and two yards from his discarded sword spell, dragged himself to his feet.

 _Noctis,_ the corpse said. Green light hovered about his head, and Gladio's stomach heaved as he recognized the telltale glow of a lich. 

"Noct!" Gladio scrambled down the campsite and into the lush grass. Above him, the lights of the Citadel were dark, the high windows yawning down at him like hundreds of gaping mouths. Gladio crashed into the pond, and Noct turned towards him, a slight frown creasing his placid face, hand still upraised.

 _My son,_ said the corpse. _Hand me the ring. The ring and the boy._

Noct pulled the ring from under his shirt. It glimmered in the predawn light.

Then Gladio reached him, and they both went down, falling sideways into the water. Noct cried out, thrashing and clawing at Gladio, and the corpse collapsed into a thin sheen of smoke, which curled around the robes of the lich, still floating over the pond.

"Shit," Noct gasped, grabbing Gladio's collar for balance. "Shit, I. I didn't see. I thought. I thought I was--"

"Don't look it in the eyes," Gladio said. That much he knew; There'd been a lich at one of Cor's old camps, once, luring soldiers out into the dark one by one. "Don't look at the light, either."

"It's all fucking light!" Noct shouted. He covered his eyes with an arm and threw up a shield. The lich regarded it carefully, then lifted a rotting foot to the domed surface. Noct shuddered, and Gladio hauled him back, tripping over the stones at the edge of the pond.

"You know how to beat these?" Noct asked. The lich slowly walked over the shield, which buckled as though under a great weight.

"Not really," Gladio said. "Cor killed one, but he didn't say how."

"Probably stabbed it until it stopped moving," Noct said. "Right. Okay. I can do that."

"What?" Gladio grunted as Noct used him for leverage, standing up in the damp grass. Noct closed his eyes, and lightning crackled in his palm, shaping itself into a spear. At his feet, the grass browned and died, falling in ashen clumps on earth that cracked like the desert in a drought. 

"Hold on," Gladio said.

 _My boy,_ said the lich. Noct jumped onto the shield, lightning thrumming in his hands, and leapt into the lich's arms.

There was a boom of thunder, and Noct was thrown face-first into the water, cursing fluently, as the spear lodged firmly into the lich's middle. The lich wailed, a high, thin keen, and collapsed into a thick miasma of blackness that spiraled into the air, laced with violet sparks.

Gladio lay under it all, hands braced in the dirt, for all of ten seconds. Then he realized, with a slow, dull horror, that Noct hasn't risen from the pond.

Noct's body was heavy in Gladio's arms as he heaved them both to shore, but all it took was the jolt of impact to shake him awake. Noct retched in the grass for a minute, hair hanging in limp strands over his eyes, and Gladio lay a hand on his back.

"It is too fucking early," Noct gasped, shoulders hunching, "for this kind of bullshit."

"Yeah, I feel ya," Gladio said. "Thanks, though."

"Can't wait for the knighthood ceremony," Noct said. He rolled onto his back, keeping clear of the mess he'd made. "You hear what it said to me? I couldn't really... think, much, at first. It was just. This light, hanging over the water, and a voice..."

"It wanted the ring," Gladio said. "And the boy, whatever that means."

"Well, they're mostly after you, so let's go with that," Noct said. "The ring and you. And, uh. A voice. I think I might've heard it before."

"Your dad?" Gladio said. Noct shook his head.

"Nah. Wasn't right. This is someone else." Noct rubbed his thumb over the ring. He glanced over at Gladio, eyes bloodshot and heavy with shadow. "I think we'd better take a look at where those power outages are coming from, don't you?"

They took a detour in the royal wing, first, raiding Gladio's closet for something Gladio could wear while Noct dug out yet another skull-patterned shirt from a bag marked with his name, brought up from his home in the city. He took off his wet clothes without a backwards glance, and Gladio caught a glimpse of taut, wiry muscles in Noct's shoulders and back before he thought to turn away.

The poor technician working at the power company a few miles south of the Citadel was entirely unprepared to entertain a prince. She squawked when she saw Gladio walk in, dumped a whole desk's worth of cheese crisps in the trash, and hurriedly tried to smooth down her hair. 

"Your highness!" she said. Gladio smiled, and her hand went to a ring she wore on her left ring finger. "What would you--how can I--"

"Hey," Noct said, pushing in front of Gladio. "I'm Noct. Bodyguard. Detective. Maybe both. We need to know if there have been any sudden outages, like whole blocks blowing out all of a sudden, in the past two weeks."

"Detective bodyguard?" Gladio asked. Noct rocked back, planting his heel directly on Gladio's toes. The technician cleared her throat.

"We're... Always getting blackouts, sir," she said. "If there's a storm, or an animal gets in a power box--"

"That happens?"

"More than you think," she said, smiling wryly at Noct. "But I'll see what I can do." She turned to her computer. Noct leaned on the desk next to her, seemingly fascinated, as she drew up a graph of outages. It looked like a long list of blue bars running across the page, interspersed with patches of red. "See? There they are. There's... Huh. Well. There's been a lot from around the lower city, actually. Which is funny, because the lower city's always getting the power turned off--"

"Yeah, that's true enough," Noct muttered.

"But it's been unaffected. And it's just one block at a time, which doesn't make sense, because these two blocks are connected on the same grid, so they should've all gone out..."

"Can you give us the locations?" Gladio asked. "And the time it happened?"

"Sure. I mean, yes, your highness."

Noct smiled at Gladio and made a fanning motion behind her back as she got to work. Gladio shot him a warning glare, which he ignored, and took the results from the printer just as they came out. "Thanks," he said to the technician, and she smiled weakly back.

"Any time," she whispered.

They pored over the pages outside, while Cor and Noctis played a complex, quiet game of _I'm not looking at you, you are_ when they thought Gladio wasn't paying attention. Noct's frown kept deepening with each dot they marked on the map on Gladio's phone, and finally, he pushed Gladio aside and drew out the rest of the line, making a loose sunburst pattern around the Citadel.

"Wait," Gladio said. "I'm not done."

"You don't have to be," Noct said. "I've seen this before."

"So have I," Cor said. Gladio and Noct looked at him. "It's a symbol of power. Regis and Aulie used to, uh. Talk about it, sometimes."

"It's a pattern you use to channel," Noct said, as though Cor hadn't spoken. "My dad came up with it. He said he figured it out when he was talking to the professors. They had this book, right, and..." Noct grimaced. "Doesn't matter. What matters is, whoever is doing this is making a channel. They're like, splitting up the power, delegating it, making it easier to use. But the pattern's too big. They need..."

He looked at Gladio. Gladio nodded slightly, and Cor narrowed his eyes.

"What do they need?" he asked.

"A conduit," Noct said. "That's part of it, anyways. If they have a conduit, something to amplify their power, they can cast a spell that could, I don't know, break the country if they wanted to."

"It'd kill them," Cor said.

"Maybe." Noct shrugged, still looking at Gladio. "Or it'd kill someone else. Remember what the daemon said, Gladio? They want the boy. Blood makes magic stronger, and you're _old_ blood, heir to the throne that keeps mages down. It'd be... poetic, I guess, to use you."

"Great," Gladio said, trying to hide some of the uncertainty from his voice. "I'm a blood sacrifice. That's great. But it still doesn't tell us who's doing it."

"No," Noct said. "It doesn't." He was rolling his hands together, over and over, as though he were shaping clay in his palms. "But that's okay."

"Noct?" Cor stiffened. "Noctis, drop your hands."

"No can do, Uncle Cor," Noct said. He smiled at Gladio, a faint, distant sort of look, and cupped his hands before his face. "Keep him in the Citadel."

Gladio lurched forward just as Noct swallowed the empty air in his hands. Noct winced, and his skin rippled for a moment before he disappeared entirely, collapsing out of view like a curtain snatched down from the rod. 

"Sorry, Gladio," he said. "He already gave himself away. I'd know that voice anywhere."

"Wait!" Gladio lunged, but Noct was already gone, leaving behind nothing more than a crackle in the air and the chalky touch of magic on Gladio's fingers, his footsteps fading into the roar of traffic.


End file.
